SUPERHUMAN LIFE No.95

Whose Child Are You?

by Ernest ONeill

It's obvious that someone or something has gone to a lot of trouble to
enable you to get up this morning, walk out into the fresh air, and go to work
or school. Something or someone built that house or apartment you live in - and
something or someone obviously designed it with great care and foresight.

But it's just as obvious that the sky above you is more beautiful and
expansive than the ceiling of your bedroom and the sunlight brighter and warmer
than the lights in your home. None of us believes for a moment that your home
resulted from an explosion and you'll laugh at anyone who suggests it came
about by chance. So, of course, none of us seriously believes that all the
greater beauties and wonders of nature came about unless there is someone or
something who wants us to be happy in the enjoyment of this wonderful universe.

Whose Child Are You?

Why has this great something or someone done all this ? Why has he made
you, and why has he given you so many experiences and things to enjoy? The best
information we have is the actions and words of the man who is known as the son
of the creator of the universe - Jesus who lived around 29 a.d. in Palestine.

He explained that His Father and He live above this time-space world,
and that His Father made you inside His only Son so that He could enjoy the
infinite beauties of his son's life in you and millions of others. But this
could only occur if you were a free person like his son - free to love him back
for all his generosity to you - and free to reject him and his love - if you
wanted.

But Our Creator knows that there is no life outside Him so He committed
himself to keeping you inside his son (really therefore inside himself) for as
long as it takes to bring you into the truth of his love for you. The death of
his son, Jesus, in Palestine expresses the actuality of God's putting himself
at our mercy as we continue to strangle Christ's spirit within us by our
autonomous, egotistic lives.

So you are really the child of your creator - someone who is dear to
him because you are part of his only Son. If you don't believe this or live
your life as if you're a separate, independent person, then you're a child
waiting to be born. Meanwhile, your dear father waits and suffers your behavior
and indifference. Yet all the time he sustains you with his life that keeps
your heart beating and your blood flowing. He spends each day planning for
little experiences and people that you will enjoy, and his son's spirit in you
subtly ameliorates the pains and tragedies that you would otherwise cause.

In fact, you live a life that your Father has already foreseen because
he knows how you will act and react in every situation, yet he so restrains his
own counteracting activity that your free will is preserved inviolate until you
willingly submit it to the One who loves you most.

How Then Are You to Live?

What are you to do in the light of these realities? Obviously there is
only one that you can take to this kind of love and care - gratitude and
whole-hearted enjoyment of all the abilities and opportunities and experiences
that God has given you. Above everything else, if you are really part of God
himself and He is such a selfless, generous person, then you will only be fully
happy if you live the same as He does. This means a generous, self-forgetful
life of joy and peace and love. Anything else is unreal and doomed to eventual
dissolution.

How do you live this kind of life? Only one knows that - no other human
being can tell you the life that God's Son has planned to live in you - no one
else knows. Each of us can know only the life that Jesus wishes to live in us -
we can't outline it to each other. This is part of the wonder of this life on
earth - each of us is a unique part of God's Son, Jesus Christ - and each of us
has to look to Him to live our lives. Within you is his Spirit. You can confirm
that you're responding to his spirit and not your own by checking it with the
life that He lived in Palestine, but faith is living in His presence and
friendship not trying to copy his life in the first century.

The truth of the matter is that no one has yet seen the life that
Christ has planned to live through you - it's another one of our dear Father's
surprises that fill the universe with his spontaneous joy and pleasure. We can
in future discussions talk about Christ's spirit and share how different it is
from our own spirit, but finally it's you and Him. Finally, you're the only one
who knows if you or He lives and speaks and acts here on earth.